Comment: County should follow board’s order on critical habitat
Published 1:30 am Saturday, February 28, 2026
By Kristin Kelly, Bill Derry, Cynthia Jones, Nancy Johnson, Lisa Utter and Tom Murdoch / For The Herald
Last May, the Snohomish County Council wrapped up a two-year process updating the county’s Critical Areas Regulations, as required under the state’s Growth Management Act.
Critical areas are defined by Washington state as wetlands, fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas, geologically hazardous areas, critical aquifer recharge areas, and flood hazard areas. Our quality of life, the safety of people, our water quality, the restoration of the salmon and the Southern Resident orcas and other terrestrial flora and fauna, must be the centerpiece of strong critical areas policies and corresponding regulations. The chinook salmon of the Stillaguamish and Snohomish rivers are high in importance as food sources for the endangered Southern Resident orcas.
For two years, at every step of the process, environmental organizations and state agencies who work on such important issues were at the table with Snohomish County, representing thousands of interested citizens. We asked repeatedly for the county to follow Best Available Science practices and the recommendations from the state’s departments of Ecology and Fish and Wildlife. Regulatory guidance, primarily from the state Department of Commerce and Department of Ecology, interprets best-available science as information derived from a valid scientific process, including peer-reviewed, properly documented and scientifically credible research.
Futurewise, Pilchuck Audubon Society, League of Women Voters of Snohomish County, Sno-Isle Sierra Club and Adopt-A-Stream Foundation and their memberships sent in a comment letter to the county council during their hearings, recommending the following code regulations:
• Require a site plan for all activities that can adversely affect wetlands and fish and wildlife habitat conservation areas.
• Add a requirement to document the applicant’s efforts to avoid and minimize impacts to critical areas and buffers.
• Adopt buffers the width of the one 200-year site-potential height measured from the edge of the active channel or active floodplain to stop declines in salmon stocks and protect Southern Resident orcas.
• Designate Department of Fish and Wildlife priority habitats and species as fish and wildlife conservation areas and protect these areas to comply with the Growth Management Act.
• Designate and protect rare plant categories and listings from Department of Natural Resources Natural Heritage Program.
• Better protect development from channel migration zones that have a high potential to damage buildings and structures.
• Add a requirement to document the applicant’s efforts to avoid and minimize impacts to critical areas and buffers, and to specify mitigation and monitoring requirements associated with wetland filling.
We appreciate that the County Council incorporated some of these requests, such as protecting priority habitats and species and protecting rare plants. Unfortunately, the updated regulations adopted river and stream buffers that are too narrow to protect rivers and streams; up to 15,000 acres of riparian forest are at risk of loss under the buffers adopted in the county’s Critical Areas Regulations update, according to the Department of Fish and Wildlife research.
These riparian forests protect fish and wildlife and provide shade to maintain the stream temperatures that salmon need to survive, as well as food for young salmon as they migrate out to sea. The county’s own Critical Areas Regulations Monitoring Report identified hundreds of acres of new impervious surfaces within buffer areas and hundreds of acres of forest loss.
The council adopted this update in May 2025. By that September, our organizations filed an appeal with the Growth Management Hearings Board arguing that the updated regulations did not adequately protect wetlands, fish and wildlife habitats, including the habitat for the threatened chinook salmon.
Last week, Feb. 17, the Growth Management Hearings Board made its final decision and order and sent the ordinance back to the Snohomish County Council to be corrected. The Board concluded the critical areas regulations ordinance, as Futurewise argued, does not comply with the Growth Management Act. The update does not protect riparian critical areas against a net loss of ecological function and that the county did not substantively consider the scientific information regarding riparian buffers that will help to protect salmon and orcas.
We commend the Growth Management Hearings Board for its decision. We are now asking the County Council to recognize the importance of the board’s decision and not to appeal that decision to Superior Court. This not only will save taxpayers’ dollars, but adoption of these strong regulations will best protect the health and safety of people, salmon, orcas, water quality and our communities.
Kristin Kelly is a consultant with Futurewise. Bill Derry is president of the Pilchuck Audubon Society. Lisa Utter is president of the League of Women Voters of Snohomish County. Cynthia Jones and Nancy Johnson are co-chairs of Sno-Isle Sierra Club. Tom Murdoch is director emeritus and board member of Adopt A Stream Foundation.
